Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Amanda Duncan
Katherine Chumacero
CABE Fall Conference
October 14, 2010
Objectives
Dialogue about: academic and social
language, semilingualism and academic
achievement, code-switching.
Understand what you personally believe about
oral language in bilingual students.
Learn what research says about these terms.
Reflect on our classroom practice.
Advocate for our bilingual students.
Academic vs. Social Language
Based on what you believe, use each group
of terms to form a sentence.
All people must learn many different registers or discourses in order to navigate
through life (conversational, academic, technology, math, literature, fashion,
sports, surfing, etc.) No one discourse is more valid than any other.
(Rolstad, 2005)
Higher order thinking can occur in any type of language. Consider a child on
the playground who says, “Wow, Mary’s got a good kick! If we get her on
our team, we’ll win for sure!” (Rolstad, 2005)
Academic and Social Language
“Semilingualism is the idea that children are nonverbal in both English and their
native language.” (McSwan, Rolstad and Glass, 2002)
“Research tells us that all normal children acquire the language of their speech
community effortlessly and flawlessly.” (Pinker, 1994)
“Any language can be a suitable vehicle for thought and learning, and any
normal child who speaks a language already has all that is needed in order
to achieve full academic development.” (Rolstad, 2005, 1994)